Christine Dantz, Author at Safe Food For Thought

February 4, 2019January 3, 2019

Guide to Menu Streamlining

When evaluating the food cost of any given menu, waste creates a major impact and hurts profit margins, especially during typically slow late winter months. Besides ordering less product, menu streamlining options can help reduce waste and leave more money in your budget. This week, we’ll offer some tips on menu streamlining menu that can prevent excess waste and improve profits.

Reducing Waste By Streamlining Your Menu

Most chefs and food managers resist the urge to trim their menu during lean months, but we feel the benefits outweigh giving your customers a wide range of choices. When evaluating your menu during traditionally slow periods, look for a few of the following options to menu streamlining :

Remove Rarely Ordered Items
Alter Dishes to Share Ingredients
Find Substitutes for Expensive Ingredients
Consider Special Menus Early in the Week

If you keep sales reports, take a look at which items are most frequently ordered and which are rarely ordered. If you have a low percentage of any menu item, consider removing it during slow times. Even at a low order rate, you may sell enough to keep ingredients on hand during peak months, but that low order rate will turn into waste when business drops off.

Side dishes can often be a source of waste. Consider using more cost effective ingredients and rewriting your menu so that more than one dish shares a side. While providing a unique ingredients and side dishes for every item gives customers options, it also increases waste. Temporarily finding ways to include the same ingredient in more than one menu item will reduce waste and lower food cost.

Some restaurants offer a special menu on slower days, typically early in the week. Weekend business usually stays steady, so running a typical menu works for busy days, but offering a more cost effective or “weekday menu” is a common solution to waste reduction.

As a food manager, do you feel altering your menu to reduce waste during the off-season is a solution for controlling food cost?

January 28, 2019January 3, 2019

FDA Warning On Avocados Has Broader Implications

MN Certified Food Protection Managers and an FDA Warning On Avocados

Last December, the FDA issued a microbiological sample study on whole, fresh avocados. As a result of this study, they have warned the general public that a chance of listeria poisoning exists if the skins are not washed before cutting. We’ve looked at their study, and we agree MN Certified Food Managers should be aware of the FDA warning on avocados, but why stop with avocados?

FDA Warning on Avocados (And Washing ALL Skinned Fruits and Vegetables)

During training, certified food protection managers learn that one of the most common causes of food-borne illness is the transfer of bacteria from one surface to another. In the case of the FDA’s recent study, this transfer has been occurring in avocados. But how does listeria end up in a dish containing avocados if we don’t eat the skin?

In the case of avocados, and other fruits and vegetables with rinds, shells or thick skins, contamination can dwell on the surface of the item in question. When you cut into these rinds, your knife blade may come into contact with listeria, salmonella or any number of other types of contaminates. Once this happens, the bacteria simply spreads into the edible portion of your fruits and vegetables as your now contaminated knife slides through the meat of your ingredient.

While there is little chance the insides were contaminated before preparation, the simple act of cutting open an avocado, melon or citrus fruit has now increased the change of illness because of a failure to wash your product ahead of time.

As a certified food protection manager, your role should be to educate and monitor your staff to see that all skinned produce is washed before preparation. Take care to ensure that everyone knows the risks, even some staff members who may not work in the kitchen who prepare ingredients such as lemon wedges for the bar, sliced oranges for garnish or any other employee whose duties involve preparing these types of items.

Do you take extra steps to wash produce with inedible skins and rinds?

January 21, 2019January 3, 2019

Identifying Future ServSafe Food Managers

staff giving thumbs up to future Servsafe food managers

The busy holiday season has ended, and down time in January provides the perfect opportunity to assess the talent in your organization. During this assessment, taking note of potential leaders on staff prepares you for the future and gives you a chance to offer training to key members interested in becoming a future ServSafe food manager. It also allows you to identify weak spots or gaps in employee training.

Future ServSafe Food Managers and Talent Assessment

Before you begin any talent assessment, it’s important to remember that any assessment based on finding weaknesses may be detrimental to your staff’s moral. Weaknesses and training gaps are important to identify and correct, but nobody likes to be constantly told what aspects of their job need improving. Focusing on identifying the positives and encouraging beneficial traits greatly impacts the effectiveness of your employees and the success of your business.

While you’re in the process of looking at your staff’s strengths, now’s the time to sit down with key members that have the ability to take on bigger roles. Run through all of the things you’ve noticed in their performance and discuss the possibilities of taking some extra training and possibly becoming one of your future ServSafe food managers. If this is something that appeals to them, point them in the direction of online food manager training or check out the schedule of upcoming instructor-led classes. It would also be a good idea to schedule some time for interested employees to shadow your current food safety manager so that they have an idea of what to expect if they agree to take on more responsibility.

We realize that not every facility has the budget for multiple certified food protection managers, but providing food safety training to exceptional staff will always be beneficial in the long run. Do you take the time to assess your staff’s talents and strengths from time to time?

January 14, 2019January 11, 2019

How the Government Shutdown Creates Food Safety Challenges

It’s been one of the biggest news stories of the past couple of weeks. The government has been shut down while the President and Congress try to hammer out a budget deal. As a result of this shutdown, thousands of government employees have been furloughed and certain agencies no longer have the funding to operate. At Food Safety Training, we usually keep our noses out of politics, but in this case, the shutdown has created challenges to keeping the food we serve safe.

Food Safety Challenges During a Government Shutdown

According to several reports, the FDA has lost funding due to the current shutdown. This means that many of the routine inspections that occur on a daily basis have ceased, and products from uninspected facilities are making their way onto grocery shelves and into the food supply used by restaurants and other industrial kitchens.

The FDA employs in the neighborhood of 5,000 inspectors and runs nearly 160 inspections per month. Those are inspections that are currently not happening. So what can certified food managers do to ensure their product is safe?

Inspect all ingredients for potential food safety hazards
Wash all produce
Cook all meats to the proper temperature
Take steps to train all staff on proper food handling procedures

The news isn’t all doom and gloom, however. While the FDA inspection process may have halted, there is still some measure of food safety control. USDA inspections of meat and some egg producers are still occurring as scheduled, the CDC is still funded in the event an agency needs to step in during a food-borne illness outbreak and foreign food inspections on products that are imported to the United States has continued. There is also speculation that the FDA may be preparing to resume inspections on facilities that produce high-risk products.

Besides governmental oversight, many of the largest food manufacturers employ their own inspectors to keep the food that leaves their facilities safe. It’s always in a company’s best interest to make sure their product will not sicken their customers, and while some food hazards slip through the cracks, many food producers have their own checks outside of government inspection.

Are there any food safety challenges that you see as a result of the government shutdown?